Description:

Bartholdi Frederic

1pp 18-line partially printed and partially handwritten invitation to attend Statue of Liberty cornerstone laying ceremony, extended by the executive committee of its American Committee. In near fine condition with expected light paper folds. Two small text portions of the invitation have been double underlined with later red ink, and lower left corner is slightly trimmed. Invitation measures 4.25” x 7.875”.

On August 5, 1884, approximately 1,500 visitors were ferried to Bedloe’s Island in New York Harbor to attend the ceremony, despite torrential summer rain. The island’s abandoned Fort Wood, built in 1807, was selected as the monument site because it was already partially built, and could be seen clearly from Atlantic shipping lanes. Richard Morris Hunt (1827-1895) incorporated the fort’s preexistent footprint of an eleven-pointed star into his pedestal design of concrete and granite sheathing. On that early August afternoon, a six-ton granite stone was lowered into the northeastern corner of the fort that would later become the statue’s pedestal.

This well-publicized ceremony was meant to galvanize the Statue of Liberty’s flagging fundraising campaign. While the statue was a gift presented by the French, the Americans were responsible for financing a suitable pedestal required to accommodate the 151-ft statue. At the time of the dedication ceremony, only about 50% of required pedestal funds were in the bank and the whole project was threatened. Thanks largely to newspaper magnate Joseph Pulitzer, who rallied the readership of his journal New York World, an additional $125,000 would soon be raised. The completed statue was inaugurated on October 28, 1886.

Frederic-Auguste Bartholdi (1834-1904) studied painting, sculpture, and architecture under well-known instructors like Viollet-le-Duc in Paris. Following his service in the Franco-Prussian War, Bartholdi became increasingly interested in sculpting monumental works celebrating resistance against oppression, and Enlightenment ideals like Freedom. Bartholdi later conceived of the design of the “Statue of Liberty Enlightening the World”. The fundraising phase of this process would take years, and indeed long surpass the actual 100 th anniversary of the United States. Yet once it was installed in 1886, the massive copper-clad sculpture of a standing woman would fundamentally change the cityscape.

This card’s invitee “Georges A. Glaenzer Esquire, Brick Church, Orange, NY” was one of the people who made the project possible. In 1886, Georges Auguste Glaenzer (1848-1915), was living in New York as a French expatriate. This Franco-Prussian War veteran transferred his interior decorating business to the United States in 1880, where he beautified the homes of affluent New Yorkers like the Vanderbilts. Glaenzer had numerous extra-professional interests including yachting and architecture. He was a member of the French Commission to the Centennial, and secretary of the French commission charged with fund-raising for the Statue of Liberty.

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